Obama's first days: Dramatic actions with a lawyer's caution

[babylonsister]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/60676.html

Obama's first days: Dramatic actions with a lawyer's caution

By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

snip//


Ultimately, the first test of Obama's leadership style will come over his proposal to spend $825 billion to stimulate the economy. He reached out anew to Republicans on Friday, inviting top Republican lawmakers as well as Democrats to the White House.

"The administration strikes me as open to our suggestions," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Republican Senate leader, said after the meeting.

While Republicans push for more tax cuts and less spending, McConnell said that he found a president who was still willing to talk, perhaps more than congressional Democrats.

"The American people overwhelmingly voted for the approach offered by Democrats," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in an interview with McClatchy and Washington Post reporters to run Sunday on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers."

That may be Obama's great challenge as he heads into his presidency: finding a way to bend his party a little more toward the center, and the other party leftward to meet them.

Many presidents start out thinking that they can charm and negotiate to get their way, only to find Washington a place of hardened views. Obama could easily find himself stuck between a liberal Democratic-led Congress set on getting its way and a Republican minority unable to get a word in.

"Much depends on Mr. Obama's reading of the current moment," said William Galston, a former aide in the Clinton White House. "If he is right, the partisan, polarized and often petty politics of recent decades can be made to yield to a higher, bolder politics of common purpose. If he is not, if the major parties remain divided on matters of principle and by memories of past quarrels, he may have to choose between accomplishments based on partisan majorities and a futile quest for common ground."